


Defiance

by SimplexityJane



Series: Resistance [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 14:23:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3071426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SimplexityJane/pseuds/SimplexityJane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three times Lily chose to defy Voldemort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Defiance

**Author's Note:**

> This is a part of an AU I've been considering for a while. Hopefully it makes sense.

One

It happened as quickly as she’d known it would. One moment, trading curses with Dolohov, Mulciber, and Bulstrode, the next, alone, except not alone. Voldemort was across the field from her, and Lily held her wand out, ready, if she were able, to cast the Killing Curse once and for all.

If they put her in Azkaban for _that_ death, they were all mad.

Voldemort _looked_ at her.

 _Expelliarmus,_ she thought, not meeting his eyes, but he drew up a shield even though he couldn’t have seen her thoughts. _Reducto, Sectumsempra!_

The cuts and force flew into the shield, tearing it apart and slicing a thin line down Voldemort’s neck. He smiled, and Lily’s breath came quicker. He wasn’t fighting back, why wasn’t he fighting back?

The answer came when her body locked up, a powerful snake made of his own magic holding her there. In that moment, Lily understood why _eight_ years had gone by and no one had been able to overcome him. How could eighteen-year-old Lily Evans hope to defeat power like this?

Even so, her own magic dug into the snake’s scales, looking for a way out. She stared at Voldemort, who had approached her in the first few seconds of panic, and he smiled at her.

 _Do not piss yourself, Lily Evans. Do_ not _piss yourself._

“Evans,” he said, and his voice was a hiss that she’d never admitted she could understand, not to Severus when they were friends, not to James even now, married as they were. It was a snake’s voice, and so what if she had the gift? They couldn’t _use_ it, not like they could her… other abilities. “If it were not for your power I would believe you a true Mudblood. As it is, no Mudblood has ever had Slytherin’s gift, not like you do.” A finger tipped up her jaw, and she felt his mind probing hers, and lashed out with teeth.

His head reared back, and for a moment she felt his rage in her own mind, though his face was blank.

“It would be a pity to kill someone with the gift,” he said, and the coils loosened just enough that Lily was able to find a hole to breathe magic into. “Will you join me? A half-blood, for surely that is what you are, will be accepted among the ranks. A half-blood with your talent would be remarkable.”

It was the disgust at that, that idea that she’d be paraded around like a pet, that made her magic sharpen, and the wild magic she’d never trained pulled her into the air, away from the anti-Apparition wards on the ground.

“Go fuck yourself,” she said, twisting, and appeared outside one of the Order’s safehouses.

Two

“You’re up, Lily,” Remus said, holding Sirius up like he would collapse if he didn’t. Lily accepted James’s kiss to her knuckles, throat thickening, and hoped that Sirius’s efforts hadn’t buggered up the prisoners’ minds like they did the last time he had to take on questioning them. She didn’t understand why Dumbledore insisted on making him do that, especially since _he_ couldn’t fight, not after torturing people.

Lily could, and did, go from interrogation room to battleground.

Not thinking on that, she ruffled James’s hair, her wedding ring dragging against his scalp. He grinned, pulling Sirius and Remus to the table, Remus muttering over Sirius and Sirius leaning in to kiss his boyfriend.

He was always cheerful, her husband, except for when he had nightmares.

Well, she corrected herself, _almost_ always cheerful. When Petunia’s new husband had called him… well, a nasty name, simply because James was Japanese, not white, he’d grown particularly cross. Lily had thought for a moment that he could probably do well with prisoners, but the moment had slipped away when he immediately backed off, going pale and shaky.

Lily was better suited for this sort of life than her husband. She hated it, yes, and she had nightmares about it, but she was _good_ at this, good enough that she had a name for herself among the Death Eaters.

She rather liked being called the Bloody Peril.

Casting a simple charm that lowered the temperature of the room to below freezing and another that kept her comfortable, Lily opened the door to the containment cell. Evan Rosier and Louis Crabbe were in chains that kept their magic from escaping, and their bodies hummed with the trapped power. It was one of Sirius’s methods, and Lily let the chains fall from their hands. She had other bindings, of course, but at least now they would think they were more comfortable. She sat down at the table, conjuring two chairs for them.

“Lily Potter,” Evan Rosier said, a rasping voice that spoke of pain. He was a handsome man, dark skinned but with shocking gray eyes, but now he was pale with the pain and those eyes were bloodshot. “I’ve a message from the Dark Lord.”

She sat back. Usually their captured Death Eaters refused to talk unless under extreme pain, whether magical or not. Or, rather, they spoke _after_ the pain ended, when someone offered them a helpful hand, but not, usually, when Lily entered the room. Her reputation had been spread by an escaped prisoner, and she already had one of ruthlessness. Usually she would finish her session, let Alice come in with food and conversation, and they’d get information that way.

“And your _message_?” she asked. Voldemort had taken an unusual interest in her, true, but she’d explained that. She’d told James about her gift, and he had loved her anyway, and though the whole Order wasn’t aware of it, Dumbledore _was_. She was trustworthy, she was _loyal_. It didn’t matter that the Thief of Death wanted her in his army.

“He offers you pardon for your crimes, if you will join him, along with your husband of course, and devote yourself and your power to him. Surely you know they won’t trust you even if your side _does_ win? You, the Bloody Peril? Your own people whisper around you already, that you’re too powerful, that you’re too _Dark_. What do you think they’ll do when they find out about your true gifts?”

Lily sighed, then rubbed her fingers together. Her grip on Rosier’s magic tightened around his neck, choking him, and Crabbe stared on in horror.

“I believe they’ll realize I’m proof that your _Lord’s_ bigotry is unfounded. Now, about the attack on the Tonks household last week.”

Three

Lying in bed, holding a hand over the secret place where her child was growing, Lily’s eyes stung with tears.

James kissed her, wiping the tears away with his thumb, and she looked at his lovely hazel eyes. They were open like they always were, even when they kissed, and she remembered Seventh Year, that first kiss when she’d opened her eyes to find him _staring_ at her, and his answer to her question (“You’re so beautiful, and I’ve loved you since we were children, I’m going to remember every moment.”). She smiled and tucked her head into his chin.

“You know,” he said, mouth twitching on her head, “They keep saying _my_ hair’s windswept. I don’t know if you realize it, but yours is worse.”

Imagining what he must be doing, trying to get her hair out of his mouth without spitting, made her shake with laughter.

“Our child is going to give us nightmares about his hair, then?” she asked, and James laughed, a little huff of it. They were barely nineteen, and they were going to be _parents_. Alice and Frank were twenty-three, at least, and they were ready for a baby. Lily and James? They were not, and they knew it. People still thought Lily should be at school, for Merlin’s sake. “I’d think all the other ones would be worse.”

She’d considered never telling James, considered going into Muggle London and going into a clinic, because they were soldiers and this was a war, and a baby didn’t deserve the sort of horrors they were going through. James would never fault her for it, she knew, even if he found out later in their lives. He would understand.

In the end, though, this was as much an act of defiance as one of love. Voldemort didn’t have the right to dictate their lives like that, and Lily had wanted to be a mother for a long time.

So she was selfish, and Sirius had already agreed to be godfather. Peter had clapped her on the back and laughed, and Remus had hugged her, asked her if she was sure. She wasn’t, of course, but she’d made decisions on less than that. She’d only agreed to date James Potter because Remus had told her about him helping a little Slytherin boy find his way to McGonagall’s classroom and drying up his tears, too.

“I suppose we’ll just have to kill You Know Who before this one can even remember him,” James said, and Lily loved him more than anything in the world.


End file.
